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Sociolinguistics from the Periphery "presents a fascinating book about change: shifting political, economic and cultural conditions; ephemeral, sometimes even seasonal, multilingualism; and altered imaginaries for minority and indigenous languages and their users."

Current academic discussions and public debates frequently focus on theimportance of defending languages against various kinds of dangers. Manyfocus on defending institutionalized languages against multilingualism, orconversely defending minority languages against the incursion of largerones. This book challenges such a view, to argue that the discussions inquestion are not about language itself, but rather that we are witnessing,on the terrain of language, ideological struggles which are centrally aboutthe position of nation states and of minorities in the new globalized worldorder. Covering a wide-range of languages from different sociolinguisticperspectives, this book is essential reading for academics interested inlanguage endangerment and sociolinguistics.